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

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 174 167 162
Rank change year-on-year -7 -5 +6
Contract jobs citing Network Security 759 491 507
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.64% 1.77% 1.54%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 17.52% 14.99% 12.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 496 289 340
10th Percentile £400 £375 £363
25th Percentile £459 £450 £462
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £533 £540
Median % change year-on-year +3.29% -1.39% -1.82%
75th Percentile £650 £638 £663
90th Percentile £738 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £550 £536 £539
% change year-on-year +2.71% -0.65% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 14 6
10th Percentile £23.00 £45.00 £30.50
25th Percentile £62.81 £55.00 £44.38
Median hourly rate £73.00 £70.16 £53.75
Median % change year-on-year +4.05% +30.53% -24.30%
75th Percentile £74.00 £84.09 £58.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £95.50 £88.81
UK median hourly rate £73.00 £70.16 £50.00
% change year-on-year +4.05% +40.32% -25.65%

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 4,331 3,275 3,970
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.35% 11.79% 12.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,560 2,052 2,319
10th Percentile £250 £225 £243
25th Percentile £400 £363 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £508
Median % change year-on-year +2.15% -3.55% +1.50%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £612
90th Percentile £677 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 378 166 213
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.06 £14.69
25th Percentile £21.33 £23.81 £23.10
Median hourly rate £43.50 £40.50 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +7.41% -29.38% +1.52%
75th Percentile £69.88 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £90.63 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £42.50 £50.50
% change year-on-year -23.53% -15.84% -10.60%

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 20 September 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 20 September 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 20 September 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 -2 333 £550 - 381
North of England +12 199 £537 +9.70% 70
North West -10 107 £536 +12.84% 44
South East -34 89 £559 +24.26% 111
Yorkshire +10 87 £540 +8.87% 20
Midlands -65 51 £450 -14.29% 60
East of England -6 41 £525 +10.53% 36
West Midlands -72 37 £450 -14.29% 42
South West -44 24 £675 +8.87% 32
East Midlands -8 14 £500 - 18
North East - 4 £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 20 (2.64%) Microsoft Exchange
2 15 (1.98%) SharePoint
3 11 (1.45%) Confluence
4 3 (0.40%) Apache
4 3 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.13%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.13%) NetWeaver
5 1 (0.13%) nginx
Applications
1 20 (2.64%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (0.79%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.40%) Microsoft Excel
3 3 (0.40%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.13%) InfoPath
4 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (0.79%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.13%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 262 (34.52%) Azure
2 176 (23.19%) AWS
3 95 (12.52%) GCP
4 84 (11.07%) Entra ID
5 48 (6.32%) Microsoft 365
6 37 (4.87%) GitHub
7 36 (4.74%) Azure DevOps
8 32 (4.22%) Azure Monitor
9 28 (3.69%) Serverless
10 23 (3.03%) SaaS
11 20 (2.64%) Azure Sentinel
12 19 (2.50%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 18 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
14 17 (2.24%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 15 (1.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 15 (1.98%) Amazon EKS
15 15 (1.98%) OCI
16 14 (1.84%) AWS Direct Connect
16 14 (1.84%) Azure AKS
16 14 (1.84%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 356 (46.90%) Firewall
2 179 (23.58%) VPN
3 161 (21.21%) WAN
4 129 (17.00%) DNS
5 104 (13.70%) LAN
6 95 (12.52%) Wireless
7 85 (11.20%) TCP/IP
8 80 (10.54%) BGP
9 72 (9.49%) DHCP
10 67 (8.83%) VLAN
11 63 (8.30%) SD-WAN
12 54 (7.11%) SSL
13 53 (6.98%) OSPF
14 42 (5.53%) MPLS
15 38 (5.01%) Cisco ISE
16 35 (4.61%) IPsec
17 34 (4.48%) Cisco ASA
18 33 (4.35%) Wi-Fi
19 31 (4.08%) Internet
20 27 (3.56%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 13 (1.71%) SQL Server
2 6 (0.79%) BigQuery
3 5 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (0.53%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.53%) Neo4j
5 3 (0.40%) Azure SQL Database
5 3 (0.40%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.26%) Data Lake
6 2 (0.26%) Delta Lake
6 2 (0.26%) Power BI
7 1 (0.13%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.13%) InfluxDB
7 1 (0.13%) Metadata
7 1 (0.13%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.13%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.13%) Qlik Sense
7 1 (0.13%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.13%) Snowflake Schema
7 1 (0.13%) Star Schema
7 1 (0.13%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 38 (5.01%) Git
2 29 (3.82%) GitLab
3 27 (3.56%) JIRA
4 25 (3.29%) Jenkins
5 6 (0.79%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (0.53%) MSBuild
6 4 (0.53%) SonarQube
6 4 (0.53%) Visual Studio
7 3 (0.40%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.40%) Browser DevTools
8 2 (0.26%) IBM UrbanCode
9 1 (0.13%) Burp Suite
9 1 (0.13%) Claude Code
9 1 (0.13%) Postman
9 1 (0.13%) SoapUI
9 1 (0.13%) Subversion
General
1 214 (28.19%) Social Skills
2 137 (18.05%) Finance
3 82 (10.80%) Analytical Skills
4 62 (8.17%) Banking
5 37 (4.87%) Public Sector
6 33 (4.35%) Documentation Skills
7 22 (2.90%) Telecoms
8 21 (2.77%) Legal
9 18 (2.37%) Financial Institution
10 14 (1.84%) Influencing Skills
10 14 (1.84%) Retail
11 13 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 13 (1.71%) Manufacturing
12 9 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
12 9 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
13 8 (1.05%) Local Government
14 6 (0.79%) Automotive
14 6 (0.79%) Military
14 6 (0.79%) Police
15 5 (0.66%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 212 (27.93%) Network Engineer
2 129 (17.00%) Architect
3 107 (14.10%) Security Engineer
4 94 (12.38%) Senior
5 67 (8.83%) Security Architect
6 63 (8.30%) Network Security Engineer
7 57 (7.51%) Consultant
8 49 (6.46%) Network Architect
9 42 (5.53%) Project Manager
9 42 (5.53%) Senior Network Engineer
10 41 (5.40%) Cloud Engineer
11 40 (5.27%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 31 (4.08%) Lead
13 29 (3.82%) Security Consultant
14 24 (3.16%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
15 22 (2.90%) Analyst
15 22 (2.90%) Network Manager
15 22 (2.90%) Network Security Architect
16 21 (2.77%) DevSecOps Consultant
16 21 (2.77%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 121 (15.94%) Terraform
2 34 (4.48%) 802.1X
3 20 (2.64%) REST
4 14 (1.84%) ARM Templates
4 14 (1.84%) SAML
5 11 (1.45%) Kafka
6 8 (1.05%) NETCONF
7 7 (0.92%) JSON
8 6 (0.79%) gRPC
8 6 (0.79%) Keycloak
8 6 (0.79%) OpenID
9 5 (0.66%) Azure Blueprints
9 5 (0.66%) LDAP
9 5 (0.66%) OAuth
9 5 (0.66%) SLSA
9 5 (0.66%) Software Packaging
9 5 (0.66%) YAML
10 4 (0.53%) .NET
10 4 (0.53%) CSS
10 4 (0.53%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 93 (12.25%) Data Centre
2 75 (9.88%) Security Posture
3 43 (5.67%) Onboarding
4 42 (5.53%) Cloud Native
5 38 (5.01%) Hybrid Cloud
6 37 (4.87%) Management Information System
7 31 (4.08%) Cyber Threat
7 31 (4.08%) Operational Technology
8 27 (3.56%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
9 24 (3.16%) PKI
10 20 (2.64%) Cloud Security Posture
10 20 (2.64%) Self-Motivation
11 18 (2.37%) Security Operations Centre
12 15 (1.98%) Data Protection Act
12 15 (1.98%) Public Cloud
13 13 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
13 13 (1.71%) Linux Command Line
14 11 (1.45%) Replication
15 9 (1.19%) SCADA
16 8 (1.05%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 93 (12.25%) Windows
2 76 (10.01%) Linux
3 41 (5.40%) Windows Server
4 18 (2.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 10 (1.32%) Unix
5 10 (1.32%) Windows 10
6 6 (0.79%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.66%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.53%) SUSE
9 3 (0.40%) Check Point GAiA
9 3 (0.40%) VMS
10 2 (0.26%) Android
10 2 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.26%) zOS
11 1 (0.13%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.13%) Rocky
11 1 (0.13%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
11 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
11 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
11 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 157 (20.69%) Cybersecurity
2 152 (20.03%) Cloud Security
3 132 (17.39%) Stakeholder Management
4 123 (16.21%) CI/CD
5 118 (15.55%) Zero Trust
6 114 (15.02%) Continuous Improvement
7 111 (14.62%) Infrastructure as Code
8 107 (14.10%) Incident Response
9 106 (13.97%) DevOps
10 105 (13.83%) Migration
10 105 (13.83%) SIEM
11 104 (13.70%) Change Management
12 94 (12.38%) Problem-Solving
13 89 (11.73%) Security Architecture
14 86 (11.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 83 (10.94%) Identity Access Management
16 80 (10.54%) Security Operations
17 76 (10.01%) Data Protection
17 76 (10.01%) ITIL
17 76 (10.01%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 138 (18.18%) Python
2 85 (11.20%) PowerShell
3 69 (9.09%) Bash
4 31 (4.08%) Bicep
5 23 (3.03%) SQL
6 13 (1.71%) Go
7 10 (1.32%) Java
8 7 (0.92%) Search Processing Language
8 7 (0.92%) Shell Script
9 5 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.53%) Rust
11 3 (0.40%) ActionScript
11 3 (0.40%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.40%) Perl
11 3 (0.40%) VBScript
12 1 (0.13%) Ruby
12 1 (0.13%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 215 (28.33%) Security Cleared
2 153 (20.16%) Cisco Certification
3 150 (19.76%) SC Cleared
4 99 (13.04%) CISSP
5 87 (11.46%) CCNP
6 69 (9.09%) DV Cleared
7 63 (8.30%) Degree
8 47 (6.19%) CCSP
9 44 (5.80%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 44 (5.80%) CCNA
10 42 (5.53%) CISM
11 31 (4.08%) Azure Certification
12 30 (3.95%) CCIE
13 25 (3.29%) AWS Certification
14 16 (2.11%) Computer Science Degree
15 12 (1.58%) PMP
16 11 (1.45%) GIAC
16 11 (1.45%) PMI Certification
17 10 (1.32%) JNCIP
17 10 (1.32%) JNCIS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (8.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 59 (7.77%) NIST
3 27 (3.56%) GDPR
4 24 (3.16%) NCSC
5 23 (3.03%) PCI DSS
6 13 (1.71%) Cyber Essentials
6 13 (1.71%) GRC
7 11 (1.45%) NIST 800
8 8 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 8 (1.05%) SLA
9 7 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 6 (0.79%) QA
11 4 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 3 (0.40%) HMG Security Policy Framework
12 3 (0.40%) SOC 2
13 2 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
13 2 (0.26%) Data Quality
13 2 (0.26%) JSP 440
14 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
14 1 (0.13%) GxP
System Software
1 77 (10.14%) Active Directory
2 55 (7.25%) VMware Infrastructure
3 29 (3.82%) Docker
4 19 (2.50%) Virtual Machines
5 16 (2.11%) VMware NSX
6 13 (1.71%) vSphere
7 12 (1.58%) Hyper-V
7 12 (1.58%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (1.05%) Virtual Desktop
9 5 (0.66%) Firmware
9 5 (0.66%) Squid
9 5 (0.66%) Virtual Servers
10 3 (0.40%) 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%) Postfix
12 1 (0.13%) ProxySG
12 1 (0.13%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 94 (12.38%) Ansible
2 73 (9.62%) Kubernetes
3 44 (5.80%) FortiGate
4 26 (3.43%) Microsoft Intune
5 23 (3.03%) Grafana
6 16 (2.11%) Progress Chef
7 15 (1.98%) Prometheus
8 13 (1.71%) SCCM
9 12 (1.58%) Single Sign-On
10 10 (1.32%) CASB
11 8 (1.05%) QRadar
12 7 (0.92%) Puppet
12 7 (0.92%) vCenter Server
12 7 (0.92%) VxRail
13 6 (0.79%) Cisco CUCM
13 6 (0.79%) Nagios
13 6 (0.79%) WSUS
14 5 (0.66%) Suricata
15 4 (0.53%) Cisco Prime
15 4 (0.53%) systemd
Vendors
1 227 (29.91%) Cisco
2 151 (19.89%) Microsoft
3 141 (18.58%) Palo Alto
4 77 (10.14%) Fortinet
5 70 (9.22%) VMware
6 66 (8.70%) F5
7 62 (8.17%) Zscaler
8 50 (6.59%) CheckPoint
9 44 (5.80%) Juniper
10 31 (4.08%) SolarWinds
11 30 (3.95%) Splunk
12 28 (3.69%) Google
13 24 (3.16%) ServiceNow
14 20 (2.64%) Aruba
15 19 (2.50%) Citrix
16 15 (1.98%) Meraki
17 14 (1.84%) Blue Coat
18 13 (1.71%) Tenable
19 12 (1.58%) CyberArk
19 12 (1.58%) ForeScout