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

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 160 140 148
Rank change year-on-year -20 +8 +88
Contract jobs citing Network Security 586 510 618
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.65% 1.98% 1.65%
As % of the Communications & Networking category 16.30% 15.00% 11.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 389 320 427
10th Percentile £350 £356 £387
25th Percentile £423 £436 £469
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% -1.82% -2.22%
75th Percentile £595 £626 £650
90th Percentile £700 £714 £745
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £550
% change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 7 16
10th Percentile £34.30 £17.60 -
25th Percentile £51.44 £26.75 £7.43
Median hourly rate £65.50 £41.00 £26.75
Median % change year-on-year +59.76% +53.27% -37.79%
75th Percentile £81.56 £64.26 £41.25
90th Percentile £93.88 £81.45 £69.38
UK median hourly rate £65.50 £41.00 £31.50
% change year-on-year +59.76% +30.16% -26.74%

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 3,594 3,400 5,249
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.14% 13.23% 13.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,317 2,035 3,151
10th Percentile £204 £210 £205
25th Percentile £363 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +5.26% -9.52%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £680 £700
UK median daily rate £480 £500 £485
% change year-on-year -4.00% +3.09% -6.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 166 101 363
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.33 £14.27
25th Percentile £18.90 £21.46 £19.99
Median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -22.22% +133.16%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £34.00 £35.00 £43.12
% change year-on-year -2.86% -18.82% +123.39%

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 27 February 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 27 February 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 27 February 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 -30 254 £525 -4.55% 52
North of England -36 111 £475 -5.00% 33
South East -16 86 £500 -7.41% 19
North West -6 67 £487 -2.68% 28
Midlands -19 67 £500 -14.02% 26
West Midlands -7 60 £500 -14.02% 22
Yorkshire -47 52 £350 -5.79% 4
South West -33 28 £538 +2.38% 16
East of England -28 25 £475 -20.83% 10
East Midlands -30 7 £442 +4.06% 4
North East -15 2 £475 - 1
South Coast - 1 - -
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 12 (2.05%) Confluence
2 5 (0.85%) Apache
2 5 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (0.85%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.17%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 18 (3.07%) Microsoft Office
2 11 (1.88%) MS Visio
3 4 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.34%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.17%) Windchill
Cloud Services
1 168 (28.67%) Azure
2 125 (21.33%) AWS
3 63 (10.75%) GCP
4 41 (7.00%) Entra ID
5 28 (4.78%) GitHub
6 26 (4.44%) GitHub Actions
7 23 (3.92%) Virtual Private Cloud
8 21 (3.58%) Azure DevOps
8 21 (3.58%) Azure Sentinel
9 20 (3.41%) Amazon S3
10 18 (3.07%) Azure Key Vault
11 14 (2.39%) Amazon EC2
11 14 (2.39%) AWS CloudFormation
12 13 (2.22%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 12 (2.05%) Microsoft 365
14 11 (1.88%) Azure ExpressRoute
14 11 (1.88%) Azure Monitor
14 11 (1.88%) Google Workspace
14 11 (1.88%) Serverless
15 10 (1.71%) Amazon GuardDuty
Communications & Networking
1 294 (50.17%) Firewall
2 129 (22.01%) VPN
3 95 (16.21%) WAN
4 84 (14.33%) DNS
5 75 (12.80%) LAN
6 74 (12.63%) BGP
7 59 (10.07%) OSPF
8 57 (9.73%) VLAN
9 56 (9.56%) TCP/IP
10 42 (7.17%) SD-WAN
11 40 (6.83%) Wireless
12 39 (6.66%) SSL
13 31 (5.29%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
14 30 (5.12%) Cisco ASA
14 30 (5.12%) MPLS
15 28 (4.78%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
16 26 (4.44%) DMZ
17 21 (3.58%) DHCP
18 20 (3.41%) NGFW
18 20 (3.41%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
1 4 (0.68%) InfluxDB
1 4 (0.68%) Relational Database
2 3 (0.51%) Amazon Athena
2 3 (0.51%) Azure SQL Database
2 3 (0.51%) Power BI
3 2 (0.34%) Data Lake
3 2 (0.34%) Oracle Database
3 2 (0.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 1 (0.17%) Redis
4 1 (0.17%) SQL Server
4 1 (0.17%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 24 (4.10%) Jenkins
2 20 (3.41%) GitLab
3 16 (2.73%) Git
4 13 (2.22%) JIRA
5 3 (0.51%) Snyk
5 3 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.17%) Browser DevTools
6 1 (0.17%) Metasploit
General
1 168 (28.67%) Social Skills
2 79 (13.48%) Finance
3 74 (12.63%) Analytical Skills
4 47 (8.02%) Public Sector
5 33 (5.63%) Banking
6 25 (4.27%) Telecoms
7 24 (4.10%) Documentation Skills
8 16 (2.73%) Financial Institution
9 11 (1.88%) Investment Banking
10 10 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (1.19%) Legal
11 7 (1.19%) Military
11 7 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
12 5 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
12 5 (0.85%) Manufacturing
12 5 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
12 5 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
13 4 (0.68%) Local Government
14 3 (0.51%) Electronics
14 3 (0.51%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 129 (22.01%) Network Engineer
2 120 (20.48%) Architect
3 82 (13.99%) Security Engineer
4 66 (11.26%) Security Architect
5 46 (7.85%) Network Architect
5 46 (7.85%) Senior
6 38 (6.48%) Network Security Engineer
7 27 (4.61%) Analyst
8 26 (4.44%) Network Security Architect
9 19 (3.24%) Cloud Engineer
10 18 (3.07%) Administrator
10 18 (3.07%) SC Cleared Network Engineer
11 17 (2.90%) Security Analyst
12 16 (2.73%) Cloud Architect
13 15 (2.56%) IT Support
14 14 (2.39%) DevOps Engineer
14 14 (2.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 14 (2.39%) IT Engineer
14 14 (2.39%) Project Manager
14 14 (2.39%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (3.58%) 802.1X
2 14 (2.39%) LDAP
3 10 (1.71%) SAML
4 8 (1.37%) Node.js
5 7 (1.19%) .NET
6 5 (0.85%) .NET Core
6 5 (0.85%) AngularJS
6 5 (0.85%) OAuth
6 5 (0.85%) OAuth2
6 5 (0.85%) OpenID
6 5 (0.85%) PyTorch
6 5 (0.85%) RabbitMQ
6 5 (0.85%) React
6 5 (0.85%) TensorFlow
7 4 (0.68%) ARM Templates
7 4 (0.68%) Elastic Stack
8 3 (0.51%) HTML
8 3 (0.51%) Lambda Expressions
8 3 (0.51%) Plotly
8 3 (0.51%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 76 (12.97%) Data Centre
2 36 (6.14%) Security Posture
3 35 (5.97%) Hybrid Cloud
4 29 (4.95%) Cloud Native
5 28 (4.78%) PKI
6 27 (4.61%) Management Information System
7 19 (3.24%) Public Cloud
8 18 (3.07%) Onboarding
9 17 (2.90%) Operational Technology
10 16 (2.73%) Cyber Threat
11 15 (2.56%) Security Operations Centre
12 14 (2.39%) Product Ownership
13 13 (2.22%) Analytical Mindset
13 13 (2.22%) IoT
14 11 (1.88%) Cyber Security Posture
15 9 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
16 8 (1.37%) CSOC
16 8 (1.37%) Virtual Team
17 6 (1.02%) Cyberattack
17 6 (1.02%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
Operating Systems
1 71 (12.12%) Windows
2 60 (10.24%) Linux
3 26 (4.44%) Windows Server
4 9 (1.54%) Unix
5 8 (1.37%) VMS
6 7 (1.19%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 3 (0.51%) Mac OS
9 1 (0.17%) Android
9 1 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.17%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 128 (21.84%) Cybersecurity
2 102 (17.41%) Problem-Solving
3 93 (15.87%) SIEM
4 88 (15.02%) CI/CD
5 84 (14.33%) Cloud Security
5 84 (14.33%) DevOps
5 84 (14.33%) Zero Trust
6 82 (13.99%) Infrastructure as Code
7 80 (13.65%) Security Architecture
8 74 (12.63%) Incident Response
8 74 (12.63%) Migration
9 60 (10.24%) Change Management
10 57 (9.73%) Continuous Improvement
11 52 (8.87%) Identity Access Management
11 52 (8.87%) Network Segmentation
12 51 (8.70%) Agile
13 47 (8.02%) Security Operations
14 45 (7.68%) Load Balancing
15 43 (7.34%) Network Architecture
15 43 (7.34%) Threat Modelling
Programming Languages
1 98 (16.72%) Python
2 56 (9.56%) PowerShell
3 31 (5.29%) Bash
4 18 (3.07%) JavaScript
5 17 (2.90%) Bicep
6 16 (2.73%) SQL
7 13 (2.22%) Kusto Query Language
8 9 (1.54%) Java
9 7 (1.19%) Go
10 6 (1.02%) Shell Script
11 5 (0.85%) C#
12 4 (0.68%) PHP
13 3 (0.51%) C
13 3 (0.51%) C++
14 1 (0.17%) ActionScript
14 1 (0.17%) C-shell
14 1 (0.17%) Korn
14 1 (0.17%) Perl
14 1 (0.17%) Ruby
14 1 (0.17%) VBA
Qualifications
1 201 (34.30%) Security Cleared
2 141 (24.06%) SC Cleared
3 107 (18.26%) Cisco Certification
4 82 (13.99%) CCNP
5 76 (12.97%) CISSP
6 68 (11.60%) DV Cleared
7 38 (6.48%) Degree
8 37 (6.31%) CCNA
9 35 (5.97%) CISM
10 26 (4.44%) CCIE
11 25 (4.27%) GIAC
12 20 (3.41%) CEH
13 18 (3.07%) CompTIA Security+
14 17 (2.90%) Azure Certification
15 16 (2.73%) AWS Certification
16 15 (2.56%) CCSP
17 14 (2.39%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 12 (2.05%) Computer Science Degree
19 10 (1.71%) JNCIS
19 10 (1.71%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (11.09%) NIST
2 64 (10.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 39 (6.66%) GDPR
4 29 (4.95%) PCI DSS
5 21 (3.58%) Cyber Essentials
6 14 (2.39%) NCSC
7 12 (2.05%) GRC
8 9 (1.54%) SOC 2
9 8 (1.37%) SLA
10 7 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 7 (1.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 6 (1.02%) Actionable Recommendations
12 4 (0.68%) HIPAA
12 4 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
12 4 (0.68%) JSP 440
12 4 (0.68%) PMO
12 4 (0.68%) RMADS
13 2 (0.34%) GxP
13 2 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 2 (0.34%) PSD2
System Software
1 42 (7.17%) VMware Infrastructure
2 34 (5.80%) Active Directory
3 31 (5.29%) Docker
4 16 (2.73%) VMware NSX
5 10 (1.71%) Virtual Machines
6 8 (1.37%) Hyper-V
7 6 (1.02%) VMware ESXi
8 5 (0.85%) vSphere
9 4 (0.68%) Firmware
9 4 (0.68%) ProxySG
10 2 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.17%) KVM
11 1 (0.17%) NFS
11 1 (0.17%) Postfix
11 1 (0.17%) RHEV
11 1 (0.17%) Sendmail
11 1 (0.17%) Varnish
11 1 (0.17%) Xen
11 1 (0.17%) XenApp
11 1 (0.17%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 104 (17.75%) Terraform
2 63 (10.75%) Ansible
3 46 (7.85%) Kubernetes
4 26 (4.44%) FortiGate
5 14 (2.39%) Nagios
6 13 (2.22%) Microsoft Intune
7 12 (2.05%) Kibana
8 10 (1.71%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (1.19%) Grafana
9 7 (1.19%) Prometheus
9 7 (1.19%) vCenter Server
10 6 (1.02%) Microsoft Clustering
11 4 (0.68%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 4 (0.68%) Progress Chef
11 4 (0.68%) Puppet
12 3 (0.51%) CASB
12 3 (0.51%) Icinga
12 3 (0.51%) Istio
12 3 (0.51%) SCCM
12 3 (0.51%) SCOM
Vendors
1 166 (28.33%) Cisco
2 107 (18.26%) Palo Alto
3 99 (16.89%) Microsoft
4 77 (13.14%) F5
5 54 (9.22%) CheckPoint
6 52 (8.87%) VMware
7 50 (8.53%) Juniper
8 42 (7.17%) Fortinet
9 35 (5.97%) Zscaler
10 29 (4.95%) Splunk
11 26 (4.44%) Google
12 19 (3.24%) ServiceNow
13 18 (3.07%) SolarWinds
14 16 (2.73%) Meraki
15 14 (2.39%) Databricks
15 14 (2.39%) Tenable
16 13 (2.22%) Aruba
17 12 (2.05%) Blue Coat
18 11 (1.88%) Okta
18 11 (1.88%) Tanium